The greatest shop luxury

Ask woodworkers what their greatest wish is and most would say “more time.” I partially agree, but there’s something I crave even more.

I talked last month about having extra shop cash burning a hole in my pocket, and not buying anything because there simply wasn’t anything I wanted for the shop. That’s not really true.

To illustrate, one of the things I did this week was cut some intricate curves. Requiring that I swap out my everyday band saw blade with a smaller one. I hate changing blades on the band saw for special cuts, as you have to reset all the guides, bearings and tension to the smaller blade. Takes forever. Then when you’re done you have to do it all over again to put the regular-use blade back on. For me, it’ be a real luxury to have two band saws, one with an everyday blade and the second a narrow blade for curve cutting. (And maybe even a third band saw with a resaw blade in it all the time!)

Likewise, two table saws would be great – one with my everyday blade, the other with a dado set. Or two router tables – one of which with a straight/rabbeting bit in it all the time, which I seem to use most often.

Yeah, it’d cost a lot to own all those machines, right? Not necessarily. We upgrade tools all the time, so why not just keep the old ones and dedicate them to secondary tasks? What a luxury!

But then, I’ve upgraded both my band saw and table saw in the last two years and could easily have realized my dream, but didn’t for a very good reason: I have no place to put those second machines, which is why I got rid of old ones in the first place. The greatest shop luxury, then, isn’t having double machines at all.

It’s having the space to put them in.

A.J.